The move by GM comes in direct response to a national outreach campaign organized by Forecast the Facts, which garnered more than 20,000 people, including 10,000 GM vehicle owners, calling on GM to drop its financial support of the Heartland Institute.

“We applaud GM’s decision and the message it sends: that it is no longer acceptable for corporations to promote the denial of climate change, and that support for an organization like Heartland is not in line with GM’s values. This victory belongs to the 20,000 Americans, including 10,000 GM owners, who demanded that GM put its money where its mouth is on climate change and sustainability,” said Forecast the Facts Campaign Director Daniel Souweine.

Climate One director Greg Dalton revealed the GM pullout after receiving confirmation directly from GM during an event at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club. Dalton had pressed GMCEO Dan Akerson about its support for Heartland at a Climate One event earlier this month. Akerson said at the time that he would personally review the Heartland funding.

Heartland President Joseph Bast was understandably upset to learn of GM's decision to cease any further financial support, but continued to push his trusty shiny penny version of events rather than own up to the real reasons for the waning support of his group's efforts. Internal Heartland documents made public last month exposed the shocking revelation of Heartland's plans to deceive schoolchildren about climate science, most notably.

GM was not the only automaker to fund the Heartland Institute: Ford and Chrysler also contributed to it in the past. Ford and Chrysler told The Huffington Post that they had stopped funding the organization over the past decade, but neither automaker had records detailing reasons for pulling that support.

It seems the Heartland Institute will have to continue relying on its “Anonymous Donor” in order to keep up its desperate attacks on climate change science and scientists.

Most of its past corporate sponsors, including Koch Industries, have jumped ship from funding Heartland's climate denial efforts. Add Detroit's major car companies to the list of heart-breakers as well.

Comments

Eventually, Heartland and other denialist organizations will follow Ghandi’s famous quote in reverse:
First you win, then they fight you, then they laugh at you, then they ignore you.
Unfortunately, we have only entered stage 2 for many of them … But it is only a matter of time. If we only had more of that though.
Note that “leadership” here came from GM. That means to me that we need to convince more of the big players such as them to reverse course, then shout it from the rooftops. Marginalizing denialists works (aka stage 4).

Yes that is really good news and well done GM for taking this stance. Although, for all we know, GM has simply redirected money into places like CATO because Heartland is now tarnished and has the spotlight on it.

For the Wattsian/Hill/Nova deniers who insisted deniergate/denialgate had all blown over and was a non event, keep dreamin. Well done desmog.

The only mention of racism in the link they had to an article describing her talk was this:

“…In many discussions in the last 30 years, climate change has been seen as either a hoax or fixable with minimal political or economic intervention, said Norgaard, author of the book “Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions and Everyday Life” (2011, MIT Press). “This kind of cultural resistance to very significant social threat is something that we would expect in any society facing a massive threat,” she said. The discussion, she said, is comparable to what happened with challenges to racism or slavery in the U.S. South…”

The word “sickness” was not used in the article but “treated” was used once:

“Resistance at individual and societal levels must be recognized and treated before real action can be taken to effectively address threats facing the planet from human-caused contributions to climate change…”

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE

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Koch Industries, the largest privately owned energy company in the United States, is lobbying European policymakers on the environment, energy markets and EU free trade agreement negotiations, according to the recently updated Transparency Register set up by the European Commission.